Frugal Fixes - Great Day!

What a day yesterday was! Sorry if the previous post seemed a bit disoriented and befuddled. Today, I'm still weak and coughing my head off but do seem to be slowly improving.

Yesterday was a wonderful day around the 5th wheel. After I got all curled up in my recliner with my blanket around me in the morning, Mike decided to go attack those power jacks in the front of the rig and see if he could figure out why they wouldn't turn on. He'd been outside about 30 seconds when I could have sworn I heard the jack motor come on and then stop. About 5 seconds later Mike came bouncing in the door doing the wildest happy dance I've ever seen him do. (Should have had my camera – LOL).

He had decided before going out there that he was going to begin at the jack motor and follow every single wire going out from it to check for loose connections, bad fuses, bad switches, etc. The first thing he did was follow the wires that go from the motor to the external switch. On the way there's a 30 amp fuse. He sort of flicked that with his finger as his hand went by and VOILA! Everything started working. He had taken that fuse out earlier and checked it; it looked fine. The casing was in good shape as is the solder that holds everything together. We've decided it must be a fuse that's starting to die. We'll be laying in a few extra fuses so we never have this problem again. We were soooo tired of hand cranking those jacks up and down. Mike was a riot; he was so happy!

While things were going well for him, I suggested maybe he should work on a few things that needed attention inside. There is a 27” TV in the entertainment center that came with our unit as well as a VCR. But the stereo is missing as well as a DVD player. We brought our own stereo and CD player with us but nothing had been hooked together yet. Mike can be really good with electrical things but not electronics – that's a whole 'nother ball game. He did manage to get some things hooked up and even had the CD player working with the sound coming out of the ceiling speakers. We need to still pick up a DVD player. I think we'd be wise to ask our son or son-in-law to come out and help us with hooking everything up together so we'll be sure they all work. LOL But the CD player working was a major accomplishment. Nice to sit here and have soft music playing.

Still on a roll, he decided next to tackle the directional reading lamp that's over my recliner. It's been very temperamental not wanting to stay on. Finally, it just quit completely. He knew it wasn't the bulb so took it apart and fiddled with it for a while. Success! It's working again. Neither one of us trust it very much; it just seems kind of 'mushy' inside. (Note: by this afternoon it had quit again. Time to buy a new one.)

He and I just felt so good today that between his labors and my suggestions some things were getting fixed in here that didn't need a service call. We've always tried to be self-sufficient when we could. Just because we're retired doesn't mean we should give up on doing as much of our own repairs and refurbishing as possible. It's part of being frugal.

By the time he'd done all that, he was getting restless and kept talking about the mini-lathe he wants. I suggested he look at them online. (We've been watching for a good used one but it's just not happening.) He found that the one he'd been thinking seriously about was on sale for just under $200. A little more than we really wanted to spend right now but after watching him pace and fidget about, I finally agreed that the time had come for him to buy one. He was off like a shot to the store about 20 miles from here. Not only did he get what he wanted but they knocked the price down another $50 so that he would purchase the 2-year warranty – he still came out below the listed sale price. No, he doesn't have the chisels yet but will soon. Yay! He's got a hobby!

As for his micro-managing I talked about in a previous post, it all seems to be settling down. Life is getting easier.

I also realized today that all the stress we'd been dealing with the last few months must be working its way out of our systems (maybe that's why I've been so sick) because for the first time in eons, I'm actually starting to get ideas in my head for a quilt I want to make AND some knitting I want to do. Now if I can just get rid of this cough.......

Til next time,

Gloria – The Internet GADabout